The American was the first to report the incident Edge techportal, and not long after, Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, confirmed that the site had been the victim of a DDoS attack. Anyone who visited the Internet Archive during the day on Wednesday may have encountered the following message – left by cybercriminals:
Have you ever felt that the Internet Archive is working on “twigs” and constantly teetering on the brink of a catastrophic security incident? It's done now. We'll meet 31 million of you at HIBP!
HIBP stands for Have I Been Pwned?, a website where people can check if their data has been leaked as a result of cyberattacks. HIBP operator Troy Hunt confirmed Sleeping computer Nine days ago, he received a file containing “email addresses, usernames, password change timestamps, hashed Bcrypt passwords and other internal data” associated with 31 million unique email addresses, the authenticity of which he later confirmed by matching user account data.
HIBP also confirmed that 54 percent of the accounts were already in their database, mainly due to previous incidents.
Although the Internet Archive's developers confirmed on Twitter that their website was working again since the attack, albeit a little slower than usual, we were unable to access it at the time of writing.
It's like an endless library
The Internet Archive is essentially the Infinite Internet Library, a non-profit digital portal dedicated to preserving and making available Internet content, books, videos, software, and other digital materials. One of its most popular services is the Wayback Machine, which allows users to view archived versions of old websites completely free. The purpose of the site is to preserve the history of the World Wide Web and ensure free access to digital cultural assets – which is why the attack is incomprehensible.
According to founder Brewster Kahle, the attackers didn't want anything from them, they simply shut down the site and exfiltrated the data of millions of users because they could. On Twitter, an account called @SN_Blackmeta claimed responsibility for the attack and, according to its statement, was preparing new payload attacks against the Internet Archive in the following days.
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